Deep Thought Of The Day
Just pretend I’m not talking about you. No…not you. You! Just pretend. You know…like you could just pretend that I didn’t have any human need for companionship and love. Homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex…
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April 11th, 2009 Deep Thought Of The Day Just pretend I’m not talking about you. No…not you. You! Just pretend. You know…like you could just pretend that I didn’t have any human need for companionship and love. Homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex… March 27th, 2009 Well Your Tune Has Certainly Changed… Vis Slashdot… Google has been busy lately taking down all music related content from YouTube’s UK viewers. This is in response to the content organization, PRS For Music’s royalty demands. Google won’t pay the rates they’ve set for online music, and is simply taking down any music contant that PRS has rights to. So PRS is happy, right? Wrong …
Here’s what PRS has to say about the tiff between it and Google, from it’s website…
So…I guess they see some value in their music being played on YouTube after all. That wouldn’t happen to be because sites like YouTube bring more new music to the attention of listeners these days…particularly Young listeners…then all the radio stations in the world combined would it…? Never mind that some musicians actively despise PRS…I’ll get to that in a minute. There was a nugget of insight in the Slashdot comments that illuminated something I’d been puzzled by, ever since the music industrial complex went on the warpath against the Internet. Why the hell are they so bent on killing Internet Radio…??? I put it down to their fear of piracy. I put it down to greed. But there’s another aspect to this here that proves Heinlein was right when he said never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity. See it here, in Pete Waterman’s pathetic whining that he isn’t being paid every time one of his magnificent works is played on YouTube… Now, never mind that a lot of people think they’re owed compensation for having to listen to this song every time they’re Rick-Rolled. Look at it. Just look at it. Waterman really thinks that a single play on YouTube is the same as a single play on radio, for which he gets a PRS royalty. One Slashdot commenter put’s it in perspective…
Emphasis mine. Here is why the corporate music industry is trying to squeeze the life out of Internet radio…they really believe that YouTube serving a song to a single user is the same as a radio station playing it once and they want the same kind of compensation the radio station gives them, Every Time an Internet site sends a song down a connection. No…wait…Even More money then the radio station would have to pay .
Emphasis mine. Thankfully they came to a deal before Pandora had to pull the plug. But this made a lot of listeners absolutely livid when this story broke, and their ire wasn’t at Pandora for not paying the musicians enough. Everyone could see this for the absolutely mind bogglingly self destructive greed that it was. I have personally bought more new music off Pandora (which makes it really easy to buy the tunes you are listening to via Amazon or iTunes) in one month then I bought in the previous five years. And that’s largely because the music industrial complex has utterly destroyed broadcast radio. I just don’t listen to it anymore. And if I’m not listening, I’m not buying. Let me tell you about YouTube. I watched a charming little video someone had put together…a train cab ride through the English countryside, time sped and slowed, set to the perfect background music. Whatever music this user had set their video to, it was lovely and when I was finished watching I fired off a message asking them what it was. It was a piece from Moby called "Inside". I looked it up on Amazon and there it was. It’s on my iPod and I’m listening to it as I type this. Are you reading this PRS…I bought a fucking copy of something I heard on YouTube the other day. And that’s not the first time either. I have maybe a dozen or so songs on my iPod now that I first heard on YouTube. Morons. The short sighted greed here is staggering, but the complete ignorance of how the Internet works isn’t. These are mostly folks of my own generation, and older, running these corporate junk music operations now, and we are a generation that grew up listening to music on static-y car radios, pocket transistor radios, and scratchy vinyl records. Most of my generational peers, according to a recent Pew Institute study, have very little to do with personal computers in their private lives. Individuals like me…technology nerds (I built my first radio when I was 9), are the exception not the rule. To most of my generational peers, the Internet is a bunch of tubes. They don’t get it. They never will. They really think that one play over the radio has the same value as one play on YouTube. Well…and they’re greedy bastards. One thing you need to know is that for all their posturing, they don’t really give a rat’s ass about musicians. This from another Slashdot commenter…
This was followed up by…
So if one of these days you find yourself wondering what happened to all the live music you used to hear…thank the record industry. March 14th, 2009 Deep Thought Of The Day People who look like that, want people who look like that. March 8th, 2009 Atlas Shrugged…Then Charged It To Someone Else…(continued) Hilzoy finds that the Men Of The Mind are a puzzling lot…
There’s a wee problem here that I’m sure has been spotted by the gasbags on the right. Vis:
I appreciate your puzzlement Hilzoy. Keep looking at the sentence you wrote about how every one of them that goes Galt frees up a job for someone else and you get the picture. They know damn well that quitting isn’t going to prove anything, other then how worthless they actually were in the grand economic scheme of things. Let’s face it, these are the folks who have been advocating, for decades now, the kinds of deregulation blue sky that got us into this mess in the first place. Wealth producers? More like wealth leaches.
To stop doing productive work, you’d have had to have been doing productive work to begin with.
Like…when they’re going on about homosexuality and sexual morality? Personal accountability? Let’s face it, if it weren’t for the right wing billionaire dole most of these deep thinkers wouldn’t have an income, let alone a platform. They’re gasbags. And I’ll endure lectures on the evils of government spending and taxation from a lot of people, but not a congressman. Especially not a republican congressman. Let’s take a closer look at this ersatz grass roots revolt against President Obama’s economic policies…shall we?
Go read the whole thing. It’s the right-wing billionaire club we’ve all come to know and love, screwing the political process so they can keep screwing the middle-class. If you thought the fight was over when Obama won, you are sadly mistaken. If we could just get rid of these drooling morons we might have a rational discussion in this country about the economy and how to clean up the mess the billionaire teat sucking jackasses have brought down on all of us. Going Galt would be a blessing for this country…the best thing they’ve ever done for it. So, fat chance of that happening. March 4th, 2009 Atlas Shrugged…Then Charged It To Someone Else…(continued) Commentary from John Stamos on This Post regarding the new hippies. Why yes John, I have read Doctor Seuss. Let it be said that Seuss could get his point across in a few pages of a children’s book. Rand on the other hand… Well to paraphrase Mark Twain’s comment on the music of Richard Wagner, Ayn Rand’s novels are better then they read. Meanwhile, back in Atlas Slouched…
You have to wonder if this guy ever paid taxes because here be basically admits he doesn’t understand how the income tax works:
Anyway…back to Atlas Slouched, and TBogg’s personal favorite:
Well that’s showing those looters a thing or two. Meanwhile, Andrew Sullivan has a note from a reader that explains it all for the dense of skull…
This is exactly what woke me up from my libertarian delusion back during the big Reagan recession: seeing so many decent, hard working people who did everything the way they were supposed to get clobbered because the gods of finance and industry turned out to be fallible human beings too, and not Greek gods holding the world on their shoulders. I was working as an architectural model maker back then, and watched appalled as developers and their financiers ran themselves off a cliff, knowing full well they were heading for the edge, knowing full well they were going to fall off eventually, knowing full well it would be a financial disaster, but utterly unable to stop themselves from chasing those last few dollars off that cliff. When it was over, nearly all my clients, the businesses I sold my services to as a model maker, had gone belly up and I was mowing lawns to make ends meet. But at least I didn’t have any mouths to feed. When the brakes came off the savings and loans, the crooks moved right in and without oversight, there was nothing to stop them. And even had they all been prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, the damage was done. There’s the problem. I saw families who had once owned nice homes, whose parents worked hard, made good money, saved responsibly and lived within their means, living in tents in campgrounds because everything they had vanished in the savings and loan scandals. What good would prosecuting the savings and loan crooks have done for them? Their money is gone. That was the end of my libertarian years. I saw that greed is not good after all. I saw that wealth is not an indicator of either moral, or common sense. I saw that to err is human, but to really screw things up you need a lot of money. I saw that selfishness is not a virtue. Pride is a virtue. Ambition is a virtue. Selfishness is a cancer on your soul. It turns your neighbors in this life, and all their hopes, all their dreams, everything they ever made for themselves, their families, their kids, into play money. March 1st, 2009 Honey, I Think It’s Time We Got A More Fuel Efficient Car… Memo to self: Don’t get a PayPal debit card…
This is more understandable then it looks. If PayPal is outsourcing its customer service to Zimbabwe then the rep would have had no trouble believing you’d bought eighty-one billion dollars worth of gas. February 25th, 2009 The Model Is Not The Reality. It Is Just A Model. So…in case you’re wondering why your 401k is in the gutter…here’s part of the problem. This article in Wired explains it in more detail. The above is a formula the gods of Wall Street were using to assess risk. Investors like risk. What they don’t like is uncertainty. If they know how to price risk, then they’ll lend. The greater the risk, the higher the interest rate. If they loose the bet every now and then that’s okay, as long as the rest of the bets pay off and they make money. But when they don’t know how to price risk, they won’t lend. What makes the current financial mess look disturbingly like the Great Depression is that there is actually a lot of money available to lend, but nobody is lending any. Because nobody feels confidant enough that they understand the risks anymore. They don’t want to loose any more money then they already have. So they’re sitting on what they’ve got. This is why the Federal Government has to step in and inject money into the economy to keep it going. The banks and investors who usually do that…aren’t. The biggest problem for investors is assessing risk in complex systems, such as the mortgage markets…
H.L. Mencken once said, "For every problem there is a solution that is simple, elegant, and wrong." Consider the Wired article on the Wall Street collapse an example. The above formula, crafted by mathematician David X. Li, seemed to simply and elegantly solve the problem of assessing risk. But it didn’t. It solved correlation. The best quote in the Wired article I’ve linked to this one, from Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a hedge fund manager and the author of The Black Swan… "Anything that relies on correlation is charlatanism." Beware your assumptions. Solving for correlation did not solve for risk. Correlation is pretty poor at solving for anything actually, not just in finances. We know poor people are thieves because we have seen many thieves who are poor. We know Jews are greedy because we have seen many greedy Jews. We know single parent families produce problem children because we have seen so many problem children who come from single parent families. We know homosexuality is caused by being molested as a child, because we have seen so many homosexuals who were molested as children… You have to be careful where you draw conclusions from. Correlation is not evidence. It is only suggestive. And especially beware of the conclusions you expected. David X. Li’s formula didn’t cause the crash. This did:
Besides, they were making too much money to stop. Besides. Besides. Right there’s the problem. They kept launching the Space Shuttle Challenger with O-ring joints that didn’t work the way the models said they should and they didn’t understand them but they kept on working, so they kept on launching. Until one of those joints killed good people who were trying to extend the human reach into space. This is such typical human behavior and it’s burned us all throughout our history and you’d think by now we’d know better, and rigorously teach our young how to avoid this trap. But we keep on doing it. There’s a saying I particularly despise: If it works, don’t fix it. There’s another way of saying that: Let’s wait for it to break.
February 23rd, 2009 It’s Not The Mirror’s Fault You’re Stupid There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer. I am a graphic artist. That is to say, I express via imagery. I don’t perform on stage. I don’t write. I am not a composer of music. I paint. I draw. But mostly I take one of my cameras and go for these little strolls around my world. I am a photographer. Not a professional nor a recognized artist, but a serious amateur. I have some galleries up here on the web site you can peruse if you like. They’re typical of what I do. Photography as been a passion of mine ever since I was in grade school. I think I can say after all these years of doing it, that I have a distinctive voice. I don’t like a lot of what I produce. That is to say, I would rather be producing something a tad more cheerful, or sensuous maybe, or beautiful. But I have this urge to produce a lot of this… …and…this…
…and…this…
…that I can’t turn away from. I have to make these images. It’s what I do. I take a camera, decide if I’m in a color or black and white frame of mind just then, and go for a wander. Sooner or later something I’ve never been able to put words to tugs me over to something, and then I am exploring a subject. Snap…circle it a bit…snap…circle some more…snap…snap…snap… It’s what I do when I get a camera in my hands. Oh yes…sometimes I get a chance to do a little of this…
I love this one…but even this, if you look at it carefully, has a sense of the other stuff in it just below the surface. For almost a decade I gave up taking photographs because I couldn’t stand to look at what was coming out of me anymore. This is hard for some folks of a…shall we say…religious right persuasion…to get about the artsy tofu and brie types they just love to loath…let alone liberals in general. It isn’t so much If it feels good do it, as You do what you must. As a matter of fact yes, it is entirely possible to be consumed with a subject matter you don’t much like, and still feel absolutely compelled to approach it with fierce honesty. But honesty is even less welcome then art in the mega-mall cathedrals of the heartland. Via Sullivan… It seems they don’t like looking at pictures of themselves at Patrick Henry College…
If the photographer was any good…and Frank’s photos can put you in mind of another Frank in their straightforwardness…then her images are honest representations of what she saw, what she found when she went to Patrick Henry. But you have to understand what Adams is saying in that quote I put at the top of this post. The photographer is always present in every image. But so are you, the viewer. Frank didn’t set out to preach and not seeing the sermon he expected out of her, Veith got angry. But not every negative review, is a bad review. [Update…] So I bought a copy of Frank’s photo book. It’s good…but I wouldn’t put her in the same class as Robert Frank. Most of the photos are posed. Few are the kind of beautiful human moments frozen out of time shots that Frank did so astonishingly well. But Robert Frank casts a large shadow over all of us. He’s one of Photography’s perfect masters. Jona Frank’s work here is good, she works well with her subjects and all her photographs are taken in their environment. You get the sense of how they fit together, how the people and their environment are each expressions of the other. But she is not a beachcomber searching for the stray seashell, the random pebble that tells stories of the open sea. She does environmental portraiture and she’s good at it. Robert Frank did moments in time. Different stuff. February 13th, 2009 Today’s Real Life Pre-Valentine’s Day Headline. Via Fark…which is a good source for Valentine’s Day complaining…
I’m glad to see the romance is still alive. So to speak. And that reminds me…time for some more entries in the poster contest! February 6th, 2009 Zombie Rhetoric That You Just Can’t Kill No Matter How Hard You Try… Over at Pam’s House Blend, the Homophobia Is A Made-Up Word argument rises grimly once more from its grave, and starts eating brains…
Hey…how about lexophobia, which is fear of dictionaries? Okay…I just made that one up. But a lot of people suffer from it. Yeah words have meaning. And homophobia is a perfectly useful word that takes its meaning from another word, xenophobia, and applies it to homosexuals rather then foreigners or strangers. Here is xenophobia:
The word homophobia simply replaces strangers or foreigners with homosexuals in the definition. The meaning is the same, it just refers to a different class or category of people who are the object of the fear and/or hatred. Simple, no? Apparently not. This isn’t complicated. Yes, the words phobic and phobia do not have that meaning, but the motherfucking suffixes can! Learn to read a dictionary and look up the goddamned suffix! There is nothing wrong with the usage of the suffix in the word homophobia. This argument makes me want to scream whenever I hear it. How about hydrophobic? That’s a molecule that does not bind with water. How can a molecule have an irrational fear of water? Tell a chemist that they should eliminate that word from their vocabulary because a molecule cannot have fear, irrational or otherwise. Or hydrophobia…which is another term for rabies. There’s thermophobic, which is intolerance for high temperatures by either inorganic material or organisms. Or photophobia…which is hypersensitivity to light? There are a lot of words like these, that do not refer exclusively or even partially to irrational fear. The argument that homophobia just means an irrational fear of homosexuals is another one of those cute little rhetorical ploys that bigots throw out there to confuse people. They do that. They will always do that. Accepting their definitions for words and terms and employing others you only think makes the concept more clear doesn’t buy you anything because they will simply redefine those new words and terms too. And they’ll keep on doing that. How…just how…do you spend Any time in this fight without knowing that, as a matter of fact no, the other side actually does Not want to make the meaning of things clear? Do you just sleepwalk through the culture war? Look at how they redefine the word homosexual for chrissake. On the one hand, there is no such thing as a homosexual because it is a leaned behavior we could all stop engaging in if we wanted to. There are no homosexuals, there is only homosexuality. On the other hand, the homosexual agenda threatens the very fabric of western civilization, and militant homosexuals want to destroy the nuclear family. Yes words have meaning. And to the culture warriors that meaning is whatever they need it to be at any given moment. They don’t want to make anything clear. They don’t want you to understand their point of view. They aren’t arguing in good faith. They never argue in good faith. They want to win. We don’t have to help them by letting them turn every converstation about gay people into a game of Calvinball. Homophobia is a perfectly legitimate word that describes a particular kind of bigotry. When one of those bigots starts yap, yap, yapping that they’re not a homophobe because they aren’t afraid of homosexuals, smack them upside the head with a dictionary and show them their photograph next to the word Bigot. January 27th, 2009 The You Can Marry Anyone Of The Opposite Sex You Want Argument I’ve considered this one a good test of mendacious jerk factor ever since I ran into a particularly loathsome creep on Usenet named Steve Fordyce, whose favorite hobby horse it was… The marriage laws do not discriminate against homosexuals. Now, everybody…including the bigots who make this argument by the way…know that this is a bogus argument. Let’s apply it to a different set of people… Laws that prohibit the practice of Judaism do The problem is it sounds perfectly logical. How can you argue that treating people the same is discrimination? But it’s a fallacy of ambiguity. To say that you are treating everyone the same is not to say you are treating everyone equitably. The trick here is that a word is being used in two different senses at the same time. Look at this again… The marriage laws do not discriminate against homosexuals. The problem is with the word ‘discriminate’. In this statement, it is being used in two difference senses at the same time. Let’s look at its definition. This one I took from The Free Dictionary…
So in the one sense, yes, the law makes no distinction between gay and straight. But it does not follow then, that the second sense of the word ‘discriminate’, to make a distinction against or in favor of a particular person or group is also not true. Let’s rephrase it… The marriage laws do not distinguish between homosexuals This statement is both true and much clearer now as to adverse discrimination, in the first sense of the word, that homosexuals endure even though they are not being discriminated in the second sense of the word. Let’s try it another way. The marriage laws treat homosexuals and heterosexuals Here the ambiguity is on the word ‘equally’. Once again, it is being used in two difference senses at the same time…
‘Equally’ is being used to mean both Having the same privileges, status, or rights: equal before the law and Impartial; just; equitable. But one does not necessarily follow from the other. Let’s rephrase it… The marriage laws treat homosexuals as if they were heterosexuals Now the problem is more clearly understood. The marriage laws deny that gay people even exist. The fallacy is one of equivocation. It is using a word in two different senses, to prove a conclusion that does not follow from the stated premise, simply because the same word appears in both the premise and the conclusion. A feather is light. See how that works? Now look at this… Marriage laws do not discriminate between homosexuals and heterosexuals. It simply does not follow. Yes, the law does not discriminate between gay and straight. It does not follow that the law does not discriminate against gay people. Nobody makes this argument honestly. Nobody. This is bad faith on its face. When you hear someone making this argument, you know you are dealing with either a bigot or an ass, and usually both.
January 4th, 2009 Radical Leftists: Still Cheerfully Working For Their Corporate Masters After All These Years German culture, or so I’m told from all the books I’ve been reading about it lately, teaches its own that life is mostly a zero sum game. This, so I’m told, follows from the fact of Germany being a small nation that is very tightly packed with people. The attitude is that if you have more of something it means someone else has less. This is in contrast to American culture which teaches us (or tries to) that life is what you make of it and wealth is something you create, not something you merely acquire. On the plus side, their attitude gives Germans a strong sense of social responsibility and mutual obligation to one another. Not as much as some Asian cultures maybe, but compared to my own native land it’s very striking. German corporations, so I am told, will bend over backwards not to fire anyone, compared to here in the U.S. where employers treat staff like paperclips to be used and disposed of at will. On the minus side…well hello there Karl Marx…Baader-Meinhof… Oh…and the paper hanger… German culture, so I’m told, tends to frown on ostentatious displays of wealth, which isn’t so very odd when you consider the circumstances of Germany, but then again it is when you consider who manufactures BMWs, Porsche, Mercedes-Benz…and…oh yes…the Maybach. The books I’m reading about German culture make the point over and over that Germans don’t like it when wealth is waved around in everyone’s face. Yet…the Maybach. Okay…there’s Volkswagon. But…the Maybach. You imagine them exporting Maybachs shamefacedly in the dead of night in containers labeled Glühwein. If only we didn’t have to make this half million dollar V12 luxury sedan with reclining massage seats and a wine cooler in armrest for all those other decadent nations we could be a proud people once more… But no… Germans like their cars very much, and that is why there are both Volkswagons and Maybachs. People here in America used to point their fingers and laugh at the old Volkswagon Beetle, but that stopped when gas prices started going up and our big three tried to make decent gas efficient sub-compact cars and couldn’t. And they still can’t. If we loved cars here in America as much as we claim to, maybe GM wouldn’t be needing a bailout now to keep tens of thousands of its employees and that third of the American workforce that depends on the car industry gainfully employed. No…what we love here in America is showing off. Here in America it’s not about the car, its about the owner. In Europe, it’s about the car, and Germans love the automobile. But a good car is expensive because it just costs more to go the extra distance in terms of engineering and quality, and Germans don’t like ostentatious displays of wealth either. So like many passionate love affairs, German fondness for the automobile is just a little bit schizophrenic. I’m thinking about all this while reading This Article in The Local about a recent rash of attacks on luxury cars in Berlin. And since I am the owner of what is ostensibly a luxury car, reading it makes me more then a tad apprehensive. I’ve known ever since I bought Traveler, that I’m likely one of these days to come out and find that someone walking past laid eyes on a Mercedes-Benz and decided then and there to let me know how much they hate rich people, and never mind that its owner isn’t rich. But that I could forgive. When you see the gods of finance throwing parties with bailout money it’s not hard to have a really bad attitude toward the fabulously well off. What I couldn’t forgive is someone who damages my car because they hate the sight of human excellence.
Of course the car in the accompanying photo is a Mercedes… Ow! That hurts just to look at. Looks like it might be an older model ‘E’ class. But…with a decorative spoiler? I can’t believe Mercedes would actually do that to one of their sedans. Listen Che…if it’s parked on the street next to a parking meter, it’s not a rich man’s car you drooling jackass. You think the CEO of AIG drives an ‘E’ class? You think the vice president at Exxon in charge of putting things on top of other things drives an ‘E’ class? What planet do you live on? That’s a working person’s car and if you think the distance between that ‘E’ class and a Kia Rio makes the Merc a luxury car you have obviously never laid eyes on a Bentley. You think that fat bloated pig of an Exxon CEO even drives his own motherfucking car, let alone parks it on the street, let alone wants to be seen anywhere near an ‘E’ class? As far as people like him are concerned, that car and its owner and you are all commoner junk. You may think you’re sticking it to The Establishment, but in reality you’re still dancing for it. Not only does the owner of that car hate you now, but so does everyone else seeing it, holding onto hope for a better life for themselves. They look at this and they don’t see The Establishment is holding them down, they see you holding them down. And that’s the way The Establishment likes it. Grow up.
January 3rd, 2009 From Our Letters From The Editor Page I honesty figured he’d just round file it, but no, Steve Fidel has to write me back…
See…if you’d been raised a Baptist like me, you’d have smiled sweetly and said "I’ll pray for you" in that tone of voice where the other person hears "burn in hell". Are Mormons Christians? No…really. January 2nd, 2009 I Really Need To Stop Reading The News Steve Fidel over at the Mormon Times complains, Thusly ….
Angry threats and rhetoric? Goodness gracious.
Angry threats and rhetoric? Wow…
Note that three of the four appellate judges in that case, Peter B. Skelos, Robert A. Lifson, and William F. Mastro, were appointed by Republican Governor George Pataki. Oh…and Skelos is the brother of Dean Skelos, currently the Republican majority leader in the State Senate. You know…the guy who has been single handedly blocking a vote on same-sex marriage in New York for the past several years.
We can only assume it would have been even worse for the spouse, had he been a heterosexual Mormon suing for the wrongful death of his legally married wife. Who knows what angry threats and rhetoric he’d have had to endure then. So…I write back to Mr Mormon Times Fidel…Thusly…
Which is about as much calm and respectful dialogue as I can manage at the moment. It’s too early in the morning here in Baltimore for me to be getting angry at knuckle-dragging morons. January 1st, 2009 A Little Friendly Advice If you are a Proposition 8 supporter and you don’t like my attitude…I strongly suggest you don’t try to tell me about it here in the comments. This is my web site and I will endure a lot of things here but bile from gutter crawling bigots isn’t one of them. I’m angry. At you. At all your pathetic self righteous excuses. At your absolute moral squalor. At your total inner depravity. At you. I’m angry. Want to see how angry? Once upon a time a writer named Harlen Ellison wrote a passage about what it is to hate that captures it…exactly: Hate. Let me tell you how much I’ve come to hate you since I began to live. You have no idea. None. Do not provoke me. |
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YouTube is not alone in the online hall of shame where the worthy notion of greater consumer choice is used as a cloak to disguise the fact that copyright infringement happens on a grand scale.
I co-wrote ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’, which Rick Astley performed in the eighties, and which must have been played more than 100 million times on YouTube – owner Google. My PRS for Music income in the year ended September 2008 was £11.
Music videos and music generally is at the very heart of User Generated Content sites. It is the hard work and creative endeavour of songwriters and musicians everywhere that has been the bedrock upon which many of these websites have been built, creating along the way huge value for their owners. As well as arguing with them over royalty rates, we should be fighting them to get proper recognition for the part we’ve played in building their businesses.